remarcable
commented
2 months ago Hey @ligi, thanks for taking the time to write this all down. This is huge, and even though I haven't responded yet, I really appreciate you taking the time to write it all down.
First of all, I want to say that this project was intentionally edgy and also, I think, a little unfair to the organizers of ETHBerlin. I actually think you did a very, very good job (I had a great time!) So thank you SO MUCH for organizing this. I'm really, really grateful.
One thing I would like to clarify is that this project was about enabling participants to host anything at ETHBerlin. My goal wasn't to degrade ETHBerlin, it was to help people meet and do interesting things together in an easy way. So when I say that there was "consumerism" or that it was "centrally organized", I mean that the barriers for participants to co-create and host were too high. I didn't mind the great food (I enjoyed it!), or that there were "experiences" (although I still don't understand if ETHBerlin got money for this or not - but I don't care about that, except for transparency).
Instead, this project raised the question of how to get participants to co-organize/create/etc. and change the perceived role of participant vs. organizer towards "everyone is an organizer". I think this is also what I mean by "core values were violated" - this wasn't really permissionless (or "direct" as you call it). As you said, this is hard to do in a fully decentralized way (and I had the same experience as an organizer at ZuBerlin).
I agree that most of these claims are exaggerated - this was my attempt to experiment with a new, edgy and sometimes even unfair "voice". For me, this was a fun but also a bit uncomfortable experience, and I'm sorry that you and the ETHBerlin team were on the other side. My hope is that for the next ETHBerlin, a project like this could actually become part of the core ETHBerlin experience - participants spontaneously becoming organizers of smaller gatherings.
So yeah, thanks again for your time. I liked how you took the claims of this project and then asked "how could we do better" where it made sense.
Even if my suggestions are probably not very helpful, I hope to have at least clarified things regarding my actual opinions about ETHBerlin.
With gratitude Marc 🫶
where did you see it and how would you change it? We actually tried to remove consumerism where-ever possible. Open to suggestions how to remove it even more - but just this plain accusation without any example is not nice IMHO.
how would you change it? I actually doubt a completely decentralized entity can pull off such an event and there needs to be at least a bit of central coordination here. But we actually try to decentralize where-ever possible. Ideas on how to decentralize parts of the organisation are highly welcome. Also please see the presentation of @q9f about how the DoD works: https://www.youtube.com/live/oaxALvcSOmA?t=1942s If you then still have ideas on how we could improve organisation we are all ears.
So we should not do the experiences? A lot of people enjoyed them - and actually the "sponsors" did not get many benefits like putting their logo all over or giving out bounties. Again: how would you change it? What should we do differently? It's the first time we could do an event without the classic sponsorship model and tried something new - so really happy about input here how we could improve this.
Again - what do you suggest we should change? Provide no food at all? Only provide shitty food? I think food and music are important fertile ground to build hacks on.
which core values have been violated? How can we not violate them? TBH: I actually you putting up telegram links is a violation of our core values - we use matrix for a very good reason. We took your slides down because of that (actually got complaints about that - people where wondering why we have telegram links on our monitors - people thought we did such a thing)
You claim you made immediate impact like that:
How do you know that more ppl came to the open source orchestra because of your "contribution"? THB I think this was more word of mouth and other communication channels and especially the orchestra just doing great music ..
we where actually kinda amused - and just took it down because of the TG link and complaints .. We did not take down the proper hacks like zuMeet that was also putting up stuff in the venue.